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Radical Islamic Ideology in Southeast
Asia
In the years following the attacks of September 11,
2001, the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point has extended
significant effort to understand the ideologies, strategies, and
structures that define terrorist groups, as well as the tactics and
techniques they employ to inflict damage on their adversaries. As became
painfully evident on 9/11, al-Qa’ida and its associated groups and
networks—Sunni extremist movements—posed the most formidable terrorist
threat to U.S. national security. For that reason, the CTC’s research
program has historically focused on Sunni militant groups.
The 17
July 2009 terrorist attacks on two hotels in Jakarta, Indonesia were a
vivid reminder of the breadth of the battle space and the importance of
constant vigilance. This break in Indonesia’s four-year calm might be a
one-time event or an indication of a resurgent regional terror threat.
With crude weapons and little logistical support, a small group of
people were capable of carrying out an attack that received global media
attention. The focus on the perpetrators of this attack may also veil
the importance of ideologies other than global jihadism to political
violence in the region, such as various strands of ethno-nationalism. As
this report highlights, global jihadism is not the only ideology
animating terrorist violence, and ethno-nationalism is still a prevalent
force in Southeast Asia.
The inherent difficulty of tactical
defense makes it ever more important to address the broader ideological
and strategic aspects of the terror threat in the hopes of identifying
important trends. This volume examines the salience and content of
jihadi ideology across Southeast Asia in an attempt to gain a better
understanding of the types of threats and susceptibility to global
jihadist violence in the region.
The volume continues the CTC
tradition of trying to understand actors posing a real or potential
threat to the United States and follows projects such as The Militant
Ideology Atlas and Cracks in the Foundation. Edited by Dr. Scott
Helfstein, this volume is an attempt to gain greater granularity on the
nature of jihadism in Southeast Asia. The volume uses a country-based
approach, focusing on jihadi ideology in Indonesia, Malaysia,
Philippines, and Thailand. The final chapter looks at jihadi content on
the internet. CTC hopes this report serves both the academic and
practitioner communities to better understand the landscape of terrorism
in Southeast Asia.
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